Bad with names? She's got an app for you

Thursday

Jan 28, 2010 at 12:01 AMJan 28, 2010 at 12:40 PM

Kelly Nowlin calls it "hey, buddy-itis": the fudging that occurs when someone's name can't quite be recalled. "I can't stand that feeling," she says. "It's a problem so many of us share." Well, now there's an app for that.

Michael Morton

Kelly Nowlin calls it "hey, buddy-itis": the fudging that occurs when someone's name can't quite be recalled.

"I can't stand that feeling," the Hopkinton, Mass., resident says. "It's a problem so many of us share."

Well, now there's an app for that.

Tapping their personal experiences and outside computer programming help, Nowlin and her business partner, Lisa Gordon of Needham, Mass., recently released an iPhone application providing a discreet memory jog.

Called NameCatcher and available for 99 cents at Apple's online store, the application works like this: Names are entered manually, then assigned a category such as "Medical" for a doctor's office or "Sports" for parents at soccer games.

Search terms are then added, such as a profession the doctor's receptionist or a few key physical attributes. When the need arises, a NameCatcher user can search by category or the extra descriptions and sneak a quick peek at the corresponding name.

That's what Nowlin does at the dog park, entered as one of her category labels. When she meets someone, she enters them soon afterward into the program, along with the name of their pet or its breed. She recently used her application to remember the name of someone whose dog had been injured, and he seemed touched.

"I sincerely do care," Nowlin said of her frequent surreptitiousness. "I just might need a tool to help me remember here and there."

NameCatcher also takes advantage of the integrated iPhone camera: Nowlin recently asked to take a photo of a local waiter because she knew she would return to his restaurant. It also makes use of the GPS function: Two shakes of the iPhone will list entered names by proximity to the meeting place.

A business version called NameCatcher Biz is also available, and the organizational categories can be customized.

"Everyone's going to have their own way of formatting the categories and searching for names," said Nowlin, a former marketing and advertising sales manager who left that industry to raise a family.

An early iPhone adopter, Nowlin initially used the device's notes feature to list brief descriptions of contacts, but soon had too many to scroll through. Out for a walk one day, she struck upon the idea for NameCatcher, recruiting Gordon to form the business Catcher in the Sky and hiring an outside firm to write code.

"They took a chance with us and were patient with us," Nowlin said.

Introduced in December, NameCatcher is slowly gaining steam, averaging 35 sales a week around the globe, with particular interest in Great Britain.

But with the list of iPhone applications numbering more than 100,000 and growing exponentially, senior consumer research analyst Chris Collins of Boston's Yankee Group said developers looking to stand out usually need to offer a useful service, tap core device features and spend money on marketing, especially in the early going.

"There are so many apps out there that breaking through the noise is essential to getting any sense of traction," he said, intrigued by Nowlin's premise. "You need to get your app noticed immediately."

Nowlin said her company is working to promote NameCatcher while brainstorming new applications. If nothing else, her company's existing program has proven popular among some of her household, a group that includes husband Chuck, a WZLX disc jockey, and their children, Haley and Jack.

Having reached the advanced age of 9, Haley thought Jack's request to enter his name into their mother's NameCatcher was silly, but the 7-year-old plowed ahead. Under search terms, he put, "likes pancakes." For category, he used "medical."

"He said I met him when he was born in the hospital," Nowlin said.

Immediate family aside, Nowlin said her application has helped her learn names. She remembered the dog owner's unaided after one additional iPhone glance. And while she mostly uses her program on the sly, occasionally she owns up, telling a new acquaintance they left quite an impression, one she wanted to remember.

Should she be caught off-guard at other times? Well, the person can probably relate to Nowlin's mental blocks.

"It's OK if people learn my secret," she said.

MetroWest Daily News writer Michael Morton can be reached at 508-626-4338 or mmorton@cnc.com.